Antidot: Fluid Topics
June 5, 2017
I find French innovators creative. Over the years I have found the visualizations of DATOPS, the architecture of Exalead, the wonkiness of Kartoo, the intriguing Semio, and the numerous attempts to federate data and work flow like digital librarians and subject matter experts. The Descartes- and Femat-inspired engineers created software and systems which try to trim the pointy end off many information thorns.
I read “Antidot Enables ‘Interactive’ Tech Docs That Are Easier To Publish, More Relevant To Users – and Actually Get Read.” Antidot, for those not familiar with the company, was founded in 1999. Today the company bills itself as a specialist in semantic search and content classification. The search system is named Taruqa, and the classification component is called “Classifier.”
The Fluid Topics product combines a number of content processing functions in a workflow designed to provide authorized users with the right information at the right time.
According to the write up:
Antidot has updated its document delivery platform with new features aimed at making it easier to create user-friendly interactive docs. Docs are created and consumed thanks to a combination of semantic search, content enrichment, automatic content tagging and more.
The phrase “content enrichment” suggests to me that multiple indexing and metadata identification subroutines crunch on text. The idea is that a query can be expanded, tap into entity extraction, and make use of text analytics to identify documents which keyword matching would overlook.
The Fluid Topic angle is that documentation and other types of enterprise information can be indexed and matched to a user’s profile or to a user’s query. The result is that the needed document is findable.
The slicing and dicing of processed content makes it possible for the system to assemble snippets or complete documents into an “interactive document.” The idea is that most workers today are not too thrilled to get a results list and the job of opening, scanning, extracting, and closing links. The Easter egg hunt approach to finding business information is less entertaining than looking at Snapchat images or checking what’s new with pals on Facebook.
The write up states:
Users can read, search, navigate, annotate, create alerts, send feedback to writers, with a rich and intuitive user experience.
I noted this list of benefits fro the Fluid Topics’ approach:
- Quick, easy access to the right information at the right time, making searching for technical product knowledge really efficient.
- Combine and transform technical content into relevant, useful information by slicing and dicing data from virtually any source to create a unified knowledge hub.
- Freedom for any user to tailor documentation and provide useful feedback to writers.
- Knowledge of how documentation is actually used.
Applications include:
- Casual publishing which means a user can create a “personal” book of content and share them.
- Content organization which organizes the often chaotic and scattered source information
- Markdown which means formatting information in a consistent way.
Fluid Topics is a hybrid which combines automatic indexing and metadata extraction, search, and publishing.
More information about Fluid Topics is available at a separate Antidot Web site called “Fluid Topics.” The company provides a video which explains how you can transform your world when you tackle search, customer support, and content federation and repurposing. Fluid Topics also performs text analytics for the “age of limitless technical content delivery.”
Hewlett Packard invested significantly in workflow based content management technology. MarkLogic’s XML data management system can be tweaked to perform similar functions. Dozens of other companies offer content workflow solutions. The sector is active, but sales cycles are lengthy. Crafty millennials can make Slack perform some content tricks as well. Those on a tight budget might find that Google’s hit and miss services are good enough for many content operations. For those in love with SharePoint, even that remarkable collection of fragmented services, APIs, and software can deliver good enough solutions.
I think it is worth watching how Antidot’s Fluid Topics performs in what strikes me as a crowded, volatile market for content federation and information workflow.
Stephen E Arnold, June 5, 2017
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